London-based private equity firm ECI Partners has made a decent exit on its investment in Chertsey-headquartered laboratory information systems vendor CliniSys, yielding a 2.5x return in a secondary buyout to London-based Montague Private Equity. Terms were not disclosed.
ECI invested in CliniSys in April 2007, backing a £61m MBO from its founding shareholders. When we met ECI a couple of years later (see IndustryViews Private Equity Q4 2009) CliniSys had 220 employees and was turning over more than £25m p.a. Expectations for the current year are in excess of £34m. Pre-tax profit last year was £8.4m though the company made a small operating loss.
ECI is still invested in Bolton-based healthcare IT consultancy, Ascribe, which it took off the stock market back in 2009 in a £33m buy-out (see Ascribe growing in UK and international health markets).
We think healthcare IT is a good place to be. The opportunity that ‘wearable’ – and even digestible – technology opens up should make this an even more enticing sector.